Today, Wii mourn a friend

Nintendo of Japan has officially retired the Famicom – their version of the Nintendo Entertainment System (pictured) – and the end of support for the Super NES, GameBoy and N64 lines isn’t far behind.

I suppose this means you young’uns will be free to cannibalize these systems for spare parts or to make “mods” – squeezing a Wii or Xbox 360 into the old system shell, making belt buckles out of old NES control pads and turning the green-screen GameBoys into alarm clocks.

The legacy of these systems (minus the portable games) will no doubt live on through the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console. [And my NES will no doubt live on in my hall closet for my kids to keep asking “What’s that?” every time they begrudgingly pull out the vacuum cleaner.]

But the hardware meant something. Never forget that.

P.S. Remember: Always hold the Reset button down when turning the NES off after playing The Legend of Zelda or any other game with saves. No one really knows why. Just don’t be the one to find out.